HARRIS NECK LAND TRUST

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The Story of Harris Neck

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A stunningly beautiful 2,687 acres of meadows, woodlands, freshwater ponds and marsh, Harris Neck – a national wildlife refuge since 1961 – was once home to a prosperous and self-reliant community of 75 African American families. From the end of the Civil War until 1942, the people of Harris Neck, located along the coast in the northeast corner of McIntosh County, Georgia, lived harmoniously with each other and their natural environment. Speaking about their lives before 1942, many of the remaining elders who still live in Georgia say, “It was a hard life, but it was a good life.”

The people lived off the land, creeks, rivers and ocean, and they took their crops, wild game and seafood to market in Savannah and Darien in small sailboats. They lived with nature, not apart from it, in a manner that would decades later come to be known as environmentally friendly and sustainable. They relied on the outside world for very little and preserved much of their African ways - a culture that came to be known as Gullah or Gullah-Geechie. A hard working and resourceful people, they had their own seafood processing plants, schoolhouse, general store and firehouse.

Harris Neck Land Trust

Our Mission

The Harris Neck Land Trust, officially established in 2006, is the organization that represents all the surviving African American families that lived on Harris Neck until 1942 as well as the few white families that owned property but did not live on the land, located in northeast McIntosh County, Georgia. The Trust was created by and is comprised of former Harris Neck community members and their descendants. It is the central and guiding unit of the Harris Neck Justice Movement, the effort to reclaim the 2,687 acres of Harris Neck - wrongfully and illegally taken by the federal government in 1942 - and return it to its rightful owners.